Touching moment for Madonna

If some new pictures of Madonna are anything to go by, it looks like the 43-year-old may well be expecting her third child - and that son Rocco is in on the secret. Rumours that the pop icon is again pregnant by film director husband Guy Ritchie have been doing the showbusiness rounds for weeks but photographs, taken during a shopping trip in Beverly Hills, seem to indicate there may be some truth in them.

The photographs appear to show Madonna raising her top and encouraging her son by Guy Ritchie to pat her stomach.

The health-conscious yoga fanatic certainly looks more shapely than her usual muscular self, and what would be more natural than to lift her top to show young Rocco where his new brother or sister is growing?

Crucially, speculation has been reported on the celebrity gossip website - which correctly predicted her last pregnancy and even the couple's choice of the name Rocco. It may also explain why she chose to cancel all the matinée performances of Up For Grabs, the play in which she is set to make her West End stage debut next month.

Of course publicists for the stars will be reluctant to confirm if their client is pregnant in the critical early stages up to the three-month scan.

However, often months after that - even right up to the birth - a star's pregnancy will still be officially denied.

Madonna's press agent, Moira Bellas, told the Standard today: "We have been inundated with calls over the last 10 days about this. I have personally been in contact with Madonna's camp more than once about it and am reliably informed she's not pregnant."

Publicists also denied Madonna's first two pregnancies with her daughter Lourdes and then Rocco, until it became too obvious.

This time Madonna might feel it is even more important to conceal the pregnancy, given the fact that there are more risks attached to older motherhood.

It was also claimed last year in the unauthorised biography, Goddess, that Madonna had 11 abortions by the time she was 18 years old - a claim which, were it true, would also affect her ability to have children.

Those claims were strenuously denied by the star at the time, though Madonna did not take any legal action against author Barbara Victor.

Rocco was born in August 2000, a few months before Madonna Ciccone married Ritchie at the Highlands castle of Skibo. Lourdes, now five, is her child by personal fitness trainer Carlos Leon.

Ritchie has described fatherhood as one of the most exciting and rewarding experiences of his life, and he has also expressed his desire to have more children with Madonna.

Of course, the pictures, published in Heat magazine today, could simply show an intimate moment where mother and child compare belly-buttons, but it is certainly unusual for the off-stage Madonna to be this demonstrative in public.

Giving birth to a money-spinning idea Lady V is out of fashion at Ajanta Sven's exploits as Eriksson the Eagle Henman's hopes for girl tennis star 'I'm not angry over losing my Saffron'